Bard
The Newbie Guide has great general info for people starting out, and this guide assumes you already know all the tips and such mentioned in it. Rolling a good Bard character can seem a daunting task at first. We need varying stats to fill the roles of both mage and rogue, and we need to stay alive and look good while doing it! Only the Good Races of Faerun can be Bards. If you want to be an Evil Race Bard-type, you'll have to be an Orc Battlechanter. Much of the advice in this guide would be the same for them, except they have different spells. Bards have 5 race choices: Human, Half-elf, Grey Elf, Dwarf and Halfling. Many people consider Halfling to be the ideal choice for this class, with Dwarves in second, and Grey Elves, Half-elves and Humans about tied for third. Halflings This race has super high Dexterity and they're pretty darn cute, even if they are a bit short! On the scale of things, they're probably tied for second place in the Charisma department. Halflings have the same HPs as Humans, have Infravision and can also Hamstring an opponent to start combat, which can stun them and put them on the ground for quite a few rounds. Their hometown, Beluir, is quite a bit of a maze, but the trip to Waterdeep isn't very difficult once you've managed to get out. Halflings are tough, quick and pretty darn good Bards. Dwarves The strongest of any race that can be a Bard, Dwarves make good hitter types even if they don't have the best Dexterity. They can drag and carry a lot, and they also have the highest HPs. They live way up north in Mithril Hall, which can take quite a trek to get all the way down to Waterdeep, but it won't seem nearly as bad once you've got Song of Travel! Dwarves are the least Charismatic, but mana isn't as necessary as you might think once you get to high levels. They have Infravision as an innate. Being so strong and sturdy, they make excellent Battle Bards. Grey Elves Starting out in Leuthilspar, these noble Elves have a rough time for their first 20 levels. Confined to the island of Evermeet thanks to their xenophobia, they have to kill in places like the Kobold Villageand Elder Forest to get anywhere in life. There are plenty of other Elves willing to lend a helping hand, though, so sending tells to higher level Greys will likely find someone to pull you out of a scrape if need be. Especially high level Druids, since they have moonwell and can get to you quickly. Other races are outcast from the city, which makes finding a newbie group difficult. As a reward, Grey Elves have the most Agility, Intelligence and Charisma, and the second highest Dexterity, getting the highest mana. They have the least HPs, but still enough to keep them competetive if you get high Con and Agil. Their high Agility makes for powerful Evasion which will also help keep them alive in large battles. Overall, this magical race makes a frail yet powerful Ballad Bard. Half-Elves and Humans It's been argued a lot about what exactly the differences are between these two races. Since both can start in Waterdeep, they have an advantage thanks to the ability to be part of a large community and the ease of finding good newbie areas to level in. They're both somewhere in between Greys and Dwarves in Charisma, have nearly the same stats in everything else, with Half-elves having slightly higher Int, Dex, and Agil, and Humans having better Str and Con, but the added Con doesn't give Humans a notch over Half-elves. Half-elves have Infravision as an innate and are welcome in Leuthilspar, able to use gear specific to Humans and Grey Elves alike. These races are easiest to start as although not as specialized to the Bard strengths in later life, making them decent Social Bards. Bards need all kinds of stats to be effective. Most important of all is Charisma! Not only will you be incredibly handsome/beautiful, but your songs will be more powerful, and you'll end up with higher base PSPs (mana). Dexterity is the second most important stat for bards. For Grey Elf and Halfling Bards, a high dexterity means an extra attack in combat. For all Bards, it gives better hitroll, which Bards really need if they want to be effective hitters, and it's also the stat which all instrument skills are linked to. It might help with stutter rates, and help you utilize your songs more effectively. Constitution is needed for every class in the game, but Bards need good HPs if they want to survive area damage spells, and a high Con is the first step toward that. You only need so much, though, before hitting the max 'notch' for your race. If you have more current HPs than max HPs after entering the game, then you've got con notches above where they're useful. Agility, Strength, and Intelligence all help too, but to lesser degrees. Agility makes you dodge better and improves your AC, Strength gives you more damroll and allows you to carry more, and Intelligence is what our spell and song skills are linked to. Int might also help with song quality. You don't need Power or Wisdom, luckily. Have enough to roll for already! After you've got your stats, you just have to pick a stylish name that fits your race, and you're done. Once in the game, the first thing you should do is type 'display psp' and 'display maxpsp', so you can see how much mana you've got left and how much you have total. You can check out a list of all the Bard skills, spells, and songs by typing 'help skill_bard' while in the game. I'll cover how useful most of these are, but you should still read the help files. Most of the Rogue applied skills can't be used while singing, like backstab, circle, sneak or hide. * Mount, Bandage, 1h Bludgeon, 1h Slashing, 1h Piercing, 1h Misc, Swimming, Defense, Dodge, Unbind, Quick Chant, Awareness, Sorcerous Spell Knowledge, Spellcast categories, Offense, Switch Opponents, Dual Wield, Double Attack, Evasion: These are all standard skills that lots of classes get, allowing you to ride horses, wield different weapons, etc. The help files are all that's needed to understand these. * Flute, Lyre, Mandolin, Harp, Drums, Horn: These are very important! These instrument skills directly affect how often you stutter and the power of your songs while holding an instrument. Check 'help instruments' for a list of which songs require which instrument type. * Melee Songs, Magical Songs, Healing Songs, Baneful Songs: Just as important as instrument skills, these mainly affect the power of the songs in that category. Each one has its own help file which lists the songs linked to it. * Lore: This skill is very handy for checking out items to assuage the natural Bardic curiosity. By the time you're high level, it fails very rarely, but there's no message to tell you when the 3x per day refreshes. * Hide: This skill is so very very powerful, it's not even funny. Making you indetectable to mobs and players alike, it can allow you to stay alive in the deadliest of situations. Bards can only get this skill up to about 60 though, which means it will fail quite often. * Sneak: The counterpoint to Hide. If you put this up first, then you won't unhide while moving and aggro mobs won't notice you entering the room. Allows you to be a real ghost while walking around, if it works. Again, a bit too low skill to be reliable for Bards, as this is the Rogue's domain. Grey Elves have Outdoor Sneak as an innate, making them stealthier than the other races. * Listen: Basically worthless, since it's blocked by more than just a few people in the room with you. It won't work in any situation you'd want to use it. * Backstab: Doesn't work very often, but fun to damage paralyzed mobs with. Bards can't get this skill high enough to dual-backstab. * Escape: This is so much better than fleeing! If you're ever in trouble, you should either know the way out or type 'scan' then pick your escape route. It's also a good way to lure mobs, or to run past aggros. * Accompany: This skill improves the power of another Bard's songs, forming a duet within your group. Very useful, and a good reason to bring a second bard. At high skill levels, it can increase the power by 40% or more. Only two bards can accompany at once, so more than that doesn't help any. The accompanying bard can circle in combat and dual-wield, since it only checks the song leader for an instrument. * Virtuoso: Automatic skill that increases song power. * Pick Lock: A nifty rogue skill that Bards can use very effectively, especially with the right picks. Bad picks will break a ton, so be sure to have enough on you. You can buy the baseline picks in most rogue guild stores for a few silver. People often overlook the fact that Bards get spells, and we can cast them while singing. They're mostly utility, but all are incredibly useful to everyday mud life. We don't need to pray or mem to get them back after casting, and we don't need to scribe or have books to get them in the first place. They refresh automatically every 24 minutes (1 mud day). At level 50, maximum spells/day: 5 2nd, 5 4th, 4 6th, 3 8th, and 2 10th circle spells. 2nd Circle * Detect Invisibility: A great spell to have up all the time, and there's no reason not to. * Detect Magic: Ditto, mainly to check protection spells. * Minor Creation: Make food, barrels of water, rafts, etc, whenever you need. 4th Circle * Invisibility: Combined with sneak/hide, yet another way to travel unseen. * Faerie Fire: Keep rogues from fleeing, hiding and coming back in to stab you. * Phantom Armor: Keep your AC as low as possible. 6th Circle * Levitate: Nifty for no-ground areas or traveling over water without a boat. * Ray of Enfeeblement: Make your enemies much weaker at melee combat. Doesn't land very often. 8th Circle * Dispel Magic: Very good utility spell. Get rid of levitates/fly that prevent you from going somewhere, or dispel poison, feeblemind, blindness, or silences on your companions. Be sure to get consent before casting this on someone else. * Feeblemind: Takes away the ability for mage mobs to cast. Fun to play with if you don't think you'll be needing the dispels. * Harmonious Blessing: +3 hitroll, -4 sv_spell and supposedly a bonus to song quality/timing, doesn't stack with bless. It reduces the amount of time it takes to switch songs by a round or two. It also has a very nice duration, so keep it up at all times. 10th Circle * Sonic Wave: Not a whole lot of damage, but it can disrupt spellcasting, which is nifty indeed. Use this whenever you're in a room full of spellcasters, especially mage-types, to try and keep them from damaging your group. * Displacement: Great to keep you out of damage! Some people think this is better than stone skin. Works especially well with high Agility/AC. Cast this on tanks if they're getting in trouble and there's no Illusionist around. Songs and instruments are the staple of the Bard class. Song effects are either constant, like hitroll bonus, or happen every 'verse', like healing and renewal. When you start singing, it will be one round (4 seconds) before the first verse takes effect, and every verse is spaced exactly 3 rounds apart after that. After the second verse of a song, many of them can be re-targetted without stopping the song, if you want to, like switching Offensive Disruption from room effect to a specific mob. Not all songs can be targetted at one player/NPC, and have to be room effect. A few have to be targetted. Songs only affect those that are in the same group as you, or in the case of offensive songs, only NPCs. Singing requires mana (PSPs), or you won't be singing for very long. Every verse of a song, there's a chance that you'll 'stutter', or fail to sing the song correctly. Whenever this happens, the song will take away a certain amount of your mana to keep going. If you don't have enough, you stop singing. Things that affect stutter rate are: whether you're holding an instrument or not, whether you're in combat or not, the stutter bonus on the instrument, your skill level in the song type and instrument, maybe Intelligence/Dexterity, and how long you've been singing. The longer you keep up a song, the more often you'll stutter, but the effects will also be more powerful. There are three base rates of stutter, Low, Medium, and High, for the various songs. There's no way to tell which type of instrument a certain item is except by holding it and trying out certain songs, unless it's named as its instrument type. For instance, lutes are often flagged lyre. Instruments have three stats unique to them: Quality, Stutter, and Min Level. The higher the Quality/Stutter, the better the instrument. Quality affects the power of all songs sung with the instrument, and Stutter helps to offset the normal difficulty of songs. If you use the instrument below its minimum level, then the bonuses won't be as high, but still better than no instrument at all. The newbie yarting has 5 Quality and 75 Stutter. The highest stats I've seen on anything other than the yarting are a 15/0 lyre and a 9/3 two-handed harp. Currently, most instruments are 0/0. Anything better than that tends to require a huge world quest that spans dozens of areas, or is an uber rare from an incredibly hard zone. Mana costs are constant and I tested the stutter rates extensively, so they aren't guesses. Here's a list of the songs and how I use them: 1st Level * Song of Regeneration - Trolls can't hold a candle to Song of Regen. This song is great for exping and for any time you need healing but don't want to waste mana. It's low cost and takes a while to heal, but is constant throughout the time you're singing it since it continues to heal in-between verses. This can substitute for a healer in exp groups with adequate tanking/stoning. ** Mana cost: 4, Stutter Rate: Low * Song of Protection - This song doesn't help much right now. It improves saves and AC, but not by enough to make it worth singing. I've heard it also helps against dragon roars. ** Mana cost: 4, Stutter Rate: Low 11th Level * Song of Offensive Harmony - This song is great to add hitroll, damroll, and give haste to your entire group. Although you have to have higher skill to get the haste on a regular basis, the song is still very useful to up the damage potential of groups with lots of hitters in them. It's also fun to sing while exping, to take some load off the enchanter and speed things up. ** Mana cost: 6, Stutter Rate: Low * Song of Offensive Disruption - This song doesn't do much until you're able to get it to slow the enemy. Room effect slow can kick total butt in zones that have lots of larger mob types, like giants or effreeti, and single target slow requires much lower skill to get and makes exping easier. It takes the pressure off the clerics and tanks, making any melee fight much more survivable. ** Mana cost: 6, Stutter Rate: Medium * Song of Renewal - This song is essential to regain your lost mana. Regenerating mana without it takes Ages. Switch over to this song whenever there's a lull in what your group is doing. ** Mana cost: 0, Stutter Rate: Never 21st Level * Song of Defensive Harmony - This song isn't very useful unless you sing it at just one tank that's taking all the damage. Offensive disruption is usually better. ** Mana cost: 7, Stutter Rate: Medium * Song of Defensive Disruption - This song doesn't do much of anything. ** Mana cost: 7, Stutter Rate: Medium 31st Level * Song of Healing - This song is one of the best that Bards get. At level 50, it heals about 80-90 HPs to the entire group every verse. With another bard accompanying, it can be as high as 130 HPs on the first verse. This ghealing (group healing) can be essential for tough area-damage fights, or keeping everybody at max hps while stomping through zones. ** Mana cost: 9, Stutter Rate: High * Song of Revelation - This song is for just puttering around and not wanting to cast detect invis/magic on yourself, or maybe determine the alignment of something, or for sense life/farsee. Doesn't improve with quality/skill; you get all the benefits from the start. ** Mana cost: 4, Stutter Rate: Low * Song of Travel - Awesome for running places. With this song up, and a good lyre and high skill, you can run from one end of the world to the other without stopping unless you run into a river or something. It regens a lot of movement points on every verse and keeps you flying the entire time. Also good for moving around on the other Planes, like Smoke or Astral. If you sing this song for long enough, the ghostly spectre of an old bard will appear. This added proc doesn't do anything except keep the memory of Kobei alive, who was a bard for many years on Sojourn/Toril before dying of a heart attack in 2002. ** Mana cost: 6, Stutter Rate: Low * Song of Sorcery - Takes one star (*) off casting times for most spells for everyone in the group and increases the power of their specialization spells. Very useful if your group is composed of a lot of casters, or you're in a fight that needs to be done as quickly as possible. Melee tends to be slower than magic anyways. Singing this song during spellups can throw off the timing of spells since the duration gets a random bonus. ** Mana cost: 9, Stutter Rate: Medium 41st Level * Song of Miscast Magic - This song isn't very useful. It has reduced effect against mobs that have Magic Resistance, which is the only situation where Silence or Bash don't work very well. ** Mana cost: 12, Stutter Rate: Medium * Song of Harming - Deals damage to either a target or everything in the room. I don't know how this stacks up against any mage type spells, but I do know it's pretty effective at taking out midling level baddies (level 30 or so). ** Mana cost: 10, Stutter Rate: High * Song of the Elements - This song can add procs for additional elemental damage to every attack. Not worth it to sing, since it takes up a lot of mana, and song of offensive harmony probably adds a lot more damage overall. ** Mana cost: 12, Stutter Rate: High 46th Level (Quest) * Song of Recovery - This song cuts ress fatigue in half, which every zone group loves. The healing is very sporadic, anywhere from 1 to 80 hps. ** Mana cost: 12, Stutter Rate: High Three words: Song of Regeneration. Keep this song up as often as you can while exping, unless you're in a group that has a cleric or other good healer. With this song, you'll be able to solo quite a bit that other classes have trouble with, too. Self-healing is the prime ability needed to do anything solo, and bards are pretty good at it. This song is extremely efficient to keep singing for long periods of time thanks to its low stutter rate and low mana cost. Until you get song of renewal, though, don't worry about having enough mana to keep singing it and just try to use your normal roguish melee to deal with mobs. AC (Armor Class) is also key. Keep phantom armor up on yourself, and ask a friendly druid or ranger for barkskin if they aren't too busy. Most bard races can have a high agility, which makes for great base AC, Grey Elves having the best of any race. High agility and low AC will reduce the number of attacks that land on you considerably, and lower the number of crits you take. Practice your instrument skills during downtime. If there aren't any groups around and you don't feel like trying to solo anything, you should be singing a song and holding the right instrument. Keeping your song and instrument skills at max for your level will make you much more desirable for groups, and allow you to do better while solo. The effects aren't immediately obvious, but skill is extremely important. Practicing hide/sneak is also a good idea after instrument skills are maxed. For exp groups that have adequate healing and stoning, song of offensive harmony is the best way to go. It's low cost/stutter rate allows you to keep it up for a very long time, and it will greatly speed up all your killing. Not only will the rangers and rogues thank you, but the enchanter or elementalist that doesn't have to haste! Keep track of when verses are going to land. Sometimes it's better to dual-wield instead of hold an instrument. Swap between them if you have verse timing down, for max effect. If you remove a drum right after the verse that gives your group haste from song of offensive harmony, it will stay up until your next verse. This can give you at least 2 rounds of dual wielding and song at max effect before you have to switch back. There's a somewhat hidden toggle available to bards called 'tog mana'. Check 'help manaburn' for how to use it and what exactly it does. While exping, try not to go below 2/3rds or 1/2 your total mana. When in zone, try not to go below 1/4th your total, unless the group requires song of healing for a really tough fight that keeps going. Dropping below those amounts can take too long to regen the mana, even with song of renewal. When practicing songs, it's a good idea to tog mana to 100 below your max, then renewal it back again and repeat the process. Know the zone, your group, and yourself. Make a note of the number of hitters and the number of magical damage dealers in the group. Scan before fights to see the number of mobs you're fighting, and know what race and class they are. Information is crucial to performing well as a Bard. If your group has a large number of hitters in it (5+ not counting yourself), then song of offensive harmony is likely worth it for clearing smaller grids or doing one mob at a time luring. If your group has a large number of magical damage dealers (3+ invokers, etc), it's a good idea to sing song of sorcery during combats if you're not needed to do other things. When in areas full of hard hitting races like giants, demons, effreeti, or anything that has a very large number of melee mobs in the room (6+), offensive disruption with room slow can often make the fights a piece of cake. This is especially true in places like Jotunheim, Muspelheim, Brass, Avernus, etc. Fighting dragons and liches, a Bard really has some power. Song of Healing can bring people back from the -5 HPs that a lich proc will put them at, and breath attacks aren't quite as deadly with a constant song going. Unfortunately, wing buffet from a dragon will often stun you, causing you to stop singing. Try to start singing again as quickly as possible! You should also wear as many HPs and sv_breath as you can when fighting anything with dragon breath, and if possible, escape out when you're below 150 HPs. A dead bard doesn't do any good, and staying in 'just one more round' to get another heal song proc will likely have you back in your guild hall. Always sing song of healing for dragons and liches! Use an instrument unless you're being accompanied. With a high skill bard accompanying you, an instrument won't add very much to the song strength so it's better to wield weapons for added damage. Group haste and room slow will be very easy to keep up even without an instrument. However, if you're singing song of healing you should stick to using a lyre. Every bit helps when your group needs ghealing. Although bards aren't very good at sneaking and hiding, these skills are powerful enough to make it worthwhile to try and use them in zones when a rogue isn't readily available. If your zone group is spanking (everyone is dying), and the zone only repops if there's nobody in it, escape out of the fight and hide. This is called 'holding the pop', and can make the CR much easier, saving zone progress for the group. If you're required to scout or drag a pcorpse out of an aggro room, put up sneak, then hide. Ask your group if you're hidden, move in a safe direction, then ask again. If sneak failed, you won't notice until after moving. Once you're sneaking and hidden, you can safely move around for quite some time. There are many commands that break hide that you should be aware of, too many to list, but the non-obvious things to avoid are group, glance, nhc, and acc. Whenever someone gets ressed, immediately switch to song of recovery (after you've quested it) unless you're told otherwise, and stick with the recently deceased. If the leader resses someone while in the zone, then they intend to take a short time out anyways. Otherwise, it's quicker to press the corpse and come back to it later. After losing about 200 mana from the last time someone was ressed, stop singing, since they're probably out of fatigue by then. Note that after you get ressed, you'll be at full mana, so you can start recovering yourself right away. Be stylish! Bards can wear the equipment from both the Mage and Rogue restriction sets. This means if an item is Anti-Warrior/Mage/Cleric, a Bard can use it just as easily as she can an item that's Anti-Warrior/Cleric/Rogue. There are even some items designed specifically for Bards, aside from instruments! Equipment that adds to mana can be useful, especially if it has HPs, hitroll or damroll on the side, but I've found that I can make do with my base mana quite easily as a Grey Elf. For songs that only have an effect on the verse, there's a little trick you can pull. The ability to change targets can allow you to get some extra verses now and then. Start singing the song, watch the first verse, then immediately after the second verse, start singing again with the same target as before. Since the first verse only takes 1 round, and every other verse takes 3, this cuts off 2 rounds every 3 verses. It's small, but sometimes it can really help keep someone alive. If you've got another bard in the group, they have to start accompanying you after each time you start again. Make a trigger to start accompanying any other bards that start singing in the room with you. You should also make a trigger to stop singing if the person you're accompanying stops and you pick up the song. Since only one person can be singing a song in the room at any time, they won't be able to switch songs if you keep singing the old song after they're done! This can kill people if they need to be singing heal, and you're singing offensive harmony. Anything that causes them to stop singing when they want to keep going will usually stop you from singing too, so there's little loss, and it's best to have a trigger so you don't miss it in spam. You can keep up a song after being bashed or blinded, and can even switch instruments while blind if you have them in your inventory, but being stunned is a bard's worst enemy You can start singing again after the song timer allows you to, but if you're still stunned, then you'll stop again when the first verse should take effect. Watch for 'Your senses clear' to let you know when you can start singing again. Silence and paralysis are other things that can stop a song, and if a singing bard walks into the room with another singing bard, one of them will overwhelm the other, causing them to stop. Don't go AFK! Pay attention to what's going on around you! I know that singing the same song for a long period of time can get boring, depending on the zone. Believe me, I've even been surprised by my screensaver once! (To any group leaders reading this: those days are behind me, I swear!) It doesn't help anybody if you go AFK, then suddenly something comes up, or you run out of mana, or a million other things that could go wrong. Try to entertain the group! Compose a few songs, or insult the dwarf's beard! Being social and interacting with your group is what makes Toril really fun.